America's Elite Are Too Close to China's Government

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

Many writers across the ideological spectrum have contended that the American people’s trust in government lessened in recent years as they realized that a rising political establishment had become culturally united in disdain for them, leaving them impoverished and disempowered.

Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory drew upon these feelings, but it created ferocious opposition because the ruling elites recognized he was mobilizing millions of Americans against the arrangements by which they lived.

These were summed up in the word globalism, the freedom to structure commercial relationships and social enterprises without reference to the well-being of their own country.

The determination to feel superior to the people whom Hillary Clinton had called the “deplorables” was what bound together Wall Street movers and shakers, the media, officials of public service unions, all manner of administrators, race and ethnic activists, and so on. The so-called “Resistance” grew by further awakening these groups to the powers and privileges to which they imagine their superior worth entitles them.

Trump’s incessant attacks on that elite, in particular the way they benefited and grew incredibly wealthy by offloading American jobs to cheap-labour countries like China, gave them a collective as well as a powerful motive for solidarity.

Why did they deal with an authoritarian regime by sending millions of American manufacturing jobs off offshore and thereby impoverishing working Americans? Because it made them rich.

Together, they saw that they represented a coming together of public and private sector interests that shared the same prejudices and hatreds, cultural tastes and consumer habits. Connections that might have once seemed tenuous or nonexistent became lucid under Trump’s scorn, and the reciprocal contempt of the elite that loathed him.

Meanwhile, think tanks and research institutions like the Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, Center for American Progress, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and others became recipients of Chinese money.

Nearly every major American industry now has a stake in China, from Wall Street to hospitality. Example? A Marriott Hotel employee was fired in 2018 when Chinese officials objected to his “liking” a tweet about Tibet. They have all learned to play by the Chinese Communist Party’s rules.

On Trump’s final days in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States has “determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, targeting Uyghur Muslims.”

Yet last year Apple, Nike, Coca Cola, Adidas, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Google, Microsoft, and General Motors lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act being considered by Congress.

Trump’s trade war with Beijing showed that he was serious about forcing American companies to move their supply chains. But under Joe Biden, they no longer need worry. The new administration is loaded with lobbyists for the American tech industry, who are determined to get the U.S.-China relationship back on track.

Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain was formerly on the executive council of TechNet, the trade group that lobbies on behalf of Silicon Valley in Washington. Incoming Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Secretary of State Antony Blinken worked at a Beltway firm called WestExec, which had lobbied on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

Biden security aide Colin Kahl was with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, which oversees the university’s links to Peking University. The latter is run by a former Beijing spy chief, Qiu Shuiping.

Biden’s special assistant for presidential personnel, Thomas Zimmerman, was a fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, flagged by Western intelligence agencies for its ties to China’s Ministry of State Security.

U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield gave a 2019 speech at a Chinese-government-funded Confucius Institute in Savannah, Georgia, where she praised China’s role in promoting good governance, gender equity, and the rule of law in Africa.

“I see no reason why China cannot share in those values,” she maintained. “In fact, China is in a unique position to spread these ideals given its strong footprint on the continent.”

Winning the 2020 election was the objective behind which the oligarchy had coalesced during the Trump years. For them, the point of having Biden elected was to protect themselves.